A Snake in the Basement and the Men Who Practice to Deceive You About It.

As most of you know the house at the Lost River farm is a large Old Order Amish built house.

It has nice new things that the Mennonites who bought it from the Amish added  but it still has a lot of the old things the Amish had salvaged and used when they built also. I love the way it all goes together but there is one thing I'm not crazy about.

The basement.

It has a partial block basement which is really more like our cellar.

There are open places and you can see the ground right under the house.

Yesterday evening I was getting supper  when the wrap room door flies open and Lucas and Tim come through the door. I could tell they were on a mission, they were going fast, not saying a word and carrying a big stick.

When I saw them go right to the basement door "Snake" was the first thing that came to my mind.

I said, "What are you guys doing? What's wrong?"

They said "nothing" but never looked at me.

Pretty soon I hear a noise then Tim comes back up and asks me if I have a sack or something.

I ask him why and he looked away.

I said, "Tim what was that noise?"

He looked away again.

I said, "Tim, was it a snake did you see a snake? Was there a snake down there"

He again looked away, I could see discomfort and a trapped looked all over him.

He said, "a frog, it was a frog"

I said Tim, "No matter what Mark and Lucas told you you've got to tell me true, was there a snake down there?"

He smiled and said "yes."

Then he gave me the usual man snake talk, which I may add he is very good at to be so young, you know the "it won't hurt you, it's more scared of you than you are it, they eat mice" you know all those things that are supposed to endear me to the snake.

I get him a sack, he goes back to the basement and soon he and Lucas ascend the basement stairs with a sack, with a snake.

I told Mark I was never going back.

Then he and Lucas told me we they used to find snake skins in our old basement all the time.

Now I was really upset, not only did I have to deal with a current day snake but I was confronted with past day snake deception.

Tim told me they knew it was there because they had been outside and saw it go in.

I made Mark promise to fill the spot with concrete not just a bag of concrete I want him to call IMI and get a truck load of concrete.

Lucas told me that won't really fix it, and I could see his dad out of the corner of my eye shaking his head at Lucas, trying to tell him to be quiet.

So you see where I'm at, I am at a place where a husband and a son and the boyfriend of a daughter have kept snake secrets from me and as far as I can tell intend to continue.

I guess there is only one thing to do, I've got to sign off of here and go on-line looking for a reputable snake exterminator.

Wish me luck or maybe courage, yeah I'm sure I'm going to be needing courage.